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"The Waveries" is a 7,000-word short story by Frederic Brown, about a life form made up of electricity. It was first published in the January, 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

George Baily writes ad copy for radio shows. One day in 1957, he hears a morse code message over a radio broadcast, but it is coming through on every station, and at every wavelength. The interference continues, so radio stations all over the world are forced to shut down. The interference expands to cover television as well. George speculates that it’s Earth’s earliest radio broadcasts from 50 years before, having passed around the universe, or through a wormhole, and returning to Earth, but he soon learns that this explanation is wrong. It is actually electrical-radio life forms, which people come to call "waveries", who were attracted to Earth by Earth’s early radio emissions. They are not necessarily intelligent, but they have surrounded and smothered the planet, causing so much interfence that electricity is now useless. Gone now are electric lights, radio, tv, a-bombs, cars, tractors, and anything else that uses electricity to function. The government supervises a swift transition to horse and buggy economy. George Baily gets a job as a small town newspaper editor and publisher. The New York population is reduced to about a million people. George loves his new life, although he says that the one thing he misses is lightning.

Reprints

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 7 (1945).

Additional Notes

The aliens in this story are similar to the ones described in the 1962 story, "The Man Who Made Friends With Electricity" by Fritz Leiber.